Six:
Emily Carr

Solitary
Genius

Forty-three
years after her death, the
reputations of the complex
personality of Emily Carr
are numerous: Western Canadaís
best-known painter as virtually
a textbook example of struggling
artist; a memoirist of real
charm, individuality, and
skill; a traveller whose
health broke down when she
stayed in two of the worldís
most glamorous capitals;
an individualist about whom
legends, true and false,
have multiplied almost continuously
since her passing in 1945.

Born
in 1871, Emily was the youngest
of the five daughters of
Richard and Emily Carr,
who also had a son. The
other children were obedient
to their sternly Victorian
father, but from her childhood
Emily was a disturbing element,
always in revolt against
authority and discipline.
Clearly her fatherís favourite
child, Emily went with him
everywhere. Her interest
in art began when she took
lessons once a week at a
private school. Her father
later found private art
lessons for her when she
began attending a public
school which did not offer
art. At the age of nine,
she produced a reasonable
sketch of her fatherís profile.

An
undefined incident between
Emily and her father when
she was in early puberty
permanently soured their
relationship and probably
had a lifelong effect on
her. Whatever it was, her
beloved father became an
object of utter contempt
until his death from a lung
ailment in 1888. The full
consequences of this possible
act of child abuse during
an era decades before such
things were acknowledged
to occur are of course impossible
now to measure. Her mother
pre-deceased her father
by two years, probably from
tuberculosis. Emily, aged
18, quit Victoria High School
the year after her father
died leaving an estate of
fifty thousand dollars.

Emily
clearly loved art from childhood
days on, but she turned
to it for a career because
she was unhappy at home
under her eldest sisterís
rule and because it was
the one activity which she
did well. She went to the
California School of Design
in San Francisco with a
small monthly allowance
from their guardian, James
Lawson. Her prudery soon
deprived her of the best
teacher at the school because
he used nude models. Without
completing her third year,
she returned to Victoria
when Lawson insisted on
it, saying that she had
"played at Art" long enough.

She
won two first prizes in
the Victoria Fall Fair and
began to teach art. In the
summer of 1898, she journeyed
alone by steamer to visit
the Ucluelet Indian Band
and was struck, having an
idealized view of Indians,
by their severe economic
problems and the current
epidemic of German measles
and whooping cough. She
quickly made friends with
those she met. They allowed
her to sketch them throughout
the summer and she left
with a number of drawings
and watercolours. On board
ship on the way back to
Victoria, she met Willam
(Mayo) Paddon who would
later try very hard to marry
her. He found her to be
deeply religious and to
regret being her familyís
"black sheep."

Despite
her platonic romance with
Mayo, she saved her money
from teaching and left the
next summer by ship to study
further at the Westminister
School of Art in the British
capital. She dropped her
reluctance to paint nude
models, now finding them
beautiful. The students
were more serious than those
in California, and she missed
San Franciscoís fun. Other
students were critical of
her because she did not
yet smoke and wore dowdy
clothes. She met a number
of Canadians, and on one
memorable occasion rented
a canoe with Sammy Blake,
son of Edward Blake, the
former national leader of
the Liberal Party of Canada.
"Canada still peeped out
of Sammy," Emily noted,
evidently both somewhatinfatuated with him
and having an active disdain
for other Canadian visitors
who attempted to be more
English than the English.

A
year later, Mayo came 5000
miles from Victoria to press
his marriage proposal, even
though she had previously
rejected it in a letter.
Together they saw London
in September; he proposed
on average five times a
week. The fall term activities
and Emilyís cooling toward
him soon made him a nuisance.
Finally, in December, he
left with a thoroughly broken
heart. Shewas also
upset for she noted much
later, "It does not hurt
the killed, it hurts the
killer." Towards the very
end of her life, she would
write to her friend Ira
Dilworth words which bitterly
describe her only romantic
involvements, "Love can
be unfair. Iíve been loved
furiously and not able to
pay back, and Iíve loved
furiously with cold response."

After
many months of painting
the human figure, she began
to do landscapes. In 1901,
she moved to the Cornish
village of St. Yves, already
a well known English art
colony, where she spent
eight months painting the
sea, cliffs, beaches and
fishermen. In a haunting
wood above the village,
her love for forest painting
began, far from the B.C.
rain forests, which she
would only conquer gradually
during the rest of her life.
Unfortunately, her health
broke down several months
later, and she entered a
sanatorium north of London
for a 15-month stay, admitted
for what is now termed psychoneurosis
and was then termed hysteria.
Eventually she returned
to Victoria after five and
a half years abroad.

Overweight
and smoking heavily, Emily
was lonely in Victoria,
and not long afterwards
accepted a teaching post
at the Vancouver Ladiesí
Art Club across Juan de
Fuca Strait. Optimism was
everywhere in Vancouver
as she arrived in 1906,
and the absence of an entrenched
English 1lite rendered the
city far more agreeable
to Emily than Victoria.
More important, many Vancouverites
had become interested in
art. Unfortunately, the
Ladiesí Art Club was then
merely a social club useful
for passing time. Emily
characteristically would
brook no frivolity from
her students. She and the
club parted after a month,
Emily resolving to teach
only children in future
because they were more pliable.
Within a year or so, she
had about 75 eager pupils
coming to her rented studio
and she threw herself into
the work. She was also asked
to give lessons at what
is today Crofton House School
for Girls. The students
there loved her too. In
1909, she did so well financially
that she was able to buy
five city lots, but she
worried that her teaching
was interfering with her
own painting. What she did
manage to complete, however,
won uncritical praise from
other prominent artists
on the lower mainland.

During
a boat trip to Alaska in
1907, she painted her first
totem poles and became captivated
by the Indian art. Ever
afterwards, the "Indian
stuff" was to remain, besides
forests, a major focus of
her artistic expression.

When
an experienced American
artist, Theodore Richardson,
complimented her first piece,
she decided to return each
summer to paint Indians
and their totem poles "before
they are a thing of the
past." Her paintings have
become a precious record
of a way of life rapidly
disappearing. The next summer,
travelling by boat, canoe
and stage coach, she painted
the Kwakiutl Indians 150
miles north of Vancouver.
Emilyís strong temperament
was clearly causing her
problems in polite Vancouver
circles, but she had a moderately
successful auction of some
of her pieces, which would
help with the expenses of
a trip to Paris.

Emily
and her sister Alice arrived
in Paris in the summer of
1910 with a letter of introduction
to an English artist, Phelan Gibb. At Gibbís suggestion,
she joined the private studio
of the Scot John Ferguson,
who taught Emily to notice
rhythm in nature. Unfortunately
she soon drove herself too
hard, and suffered further
attacks of hysteria and
influenza.

After
her recovery, Emily joined
Gibbís landscape painting
class outside the city for
four months. It was the
highlight of her year abroad.
She did quaint villages,
farms, and local people.
Gibb taught her to juxtapose
cold colours with hot to
give natural objects greater
depth. He also told her
that she could become one
of the great woman painters
of the day. Under him, she
grew much artistically and
yearned to try out her new
techniques on the "bigger
material of the West." Just
before leaving Paris, she
was quite overjoyed to see
two of her paintings exhibited
in the Salon díAutomne in
the Grand Palais just off
the Avenue des Champs Elysťes.

If
Emily half expected to set
the west coast afire with
the new techniques of the
French impressionists, she
was deeply disappointed.
Back home, even her sisters
and favourite friends turned
only icy silence toward
the canvases she had done
in France. Despite public
scorn and poor reviews,
however, she opened a studio
on West Broadway Avenue
in Vancouver and exhibited
seventy of her oils and
watercolours. Although several
visitors gasped at her new
indifference to detail and
very aggressive colours,
a number of pieces were
sold. No one in the entire
city seemed to realize that
the old art order had passed.

She
developed an original Post-impressionist
style and later adopted
some elements of Cubism
to express "the bigger things"
in nature. By a skilled
juxtaposition of colours,
and ignoring details when
aiming at achieving a light
effect that would reveal
things in nature not seen
by the average person, she
achieved her finest pieces.
As a leader of creative
art, bringing emotion and
movement into a scene that
no camera could catch, she
was half a century ahead
of her time, overlooked
by most of her contemporaries.

She
eloquently defended her
new artistic credo: "Pictures
should be inspired by nature
but made in the soul of
the artist.... Extract the
essence of your subject
and paint yourself into
it; forget the little petty
things that donít count;
try for the bigger side....íí

After
further instances of rejection,
she journeyed north in 1912
to try her new techniques
on her beloved totem poles,
and the following winter
she moved back to Victoria.

Emily
soon entered the lowest
period in her entire life
as she established a boarding
house to provide an income
to support her art. She
was able to supplement her
meagre income a little by
selling paintings, but in
Victoria the general hostility
to her new style remained
strong. In 1913 and 1914,
she made no trip north and
produced few new canvases.
As her biographer Maria
Tippett puts it, Emilyís
life after 1913, her forty-second
year, was for the first
time no longer dominated
by her art but instead by
her boarders. "I loathed
being a landlady," she said.

When
the war finally ended, and
the local economy improved,
she began to spend more
time at painting. In the
summer of 1920, she went
to the west coast of Vancouver
Island to do landscapes
and painted briefly in southern
British Columbia. In late
1921, Mortimer Lamb, a promoter
of Ontarioís Group of Seven
artists, viewed and was
greatly impressed by her
entire personal collection
of art. Lamb later wrote
about her to Eric Brown,
director of the National
Gallery in Ottawa. Brown
did nothing during the next
several years as the National
Gallery continued its practice
of essentially ignoring
Western and Atlantic artists.

Only
in the summer of 1927 was
Emily finally "discovered"
by Brown, during his visit
to Victoria in search of
pieces for an upcoming exhibition
of West Coast Indian art.
He was overwhelmed by her
sketches, oils and watercolours
of Indians, totem poles
and Indian villages. The
next night, speaking as
if he had never heard of
Emily Carr before, he told
a Victoria audience that
their local artistís work
was "as good as anything
that is being done in the
country."

Emily
sent 27 watercolours and
eleven oil paintings immediately
to Ottawa and journeyed
east herself by train for
the exhibit. Stopping in
Toronto, she made one of
the most important friendships
of her life with the acknowledged
leader of the (3roup of
Seven, Lawren Harris. It
was Harris whose work struck
her dumb. His paintings,
she noted, played deep "into
the vast lovely soul of
Canada; they plumbed to
her depths, climbed her
heights and floated into
her spaces."

Brown
and Marius Barbeau gave
her a royal welcome in Ottawa:
teas, dinners, drives. On
the glorious day when the
exhibit opened, her pieces
sparkled. Although only
a few people attended the
opening, her six-week trip,
during which she passed
her fifty-sixth birthday,
elevated her work to national
stature. The leading members
of the Group of Seven had
accepted her and the National
Gallery bought three paintings
from the exhibit.

In
1929, accepting Harrisís
suggestion that she choose
subjects other than totem
poles for a year, she began
to paint the B.C. forests,
feeling for the presence
of God in them. Though she
never thought of herself
as a religious woman in
an orthodox sense, she had
always carried with her
a strong sense of God. She
felt that God was always
present in the forest and
attempted to reach out and
up to Him through her paintings.
During her spring trip,
this time to Nootka Island,
she did one of her most
famous paintings, Indian
Church, and later that
summer she painted Grey,
depicting a terrible
almighty in a vast forest.

No
other Canadian has succeeded
so well in capturing the
deep silence of West Coast
forest, the surging rush
of living stretches of green
and grey and brown, or the
towering majesty of trees
reaching up to the light.
Her forest is silent, dark
and awesome in its powerful
swirls and strong rhythms.
The light is shadowy and
slants down the long brown
trunks of trees in shifting
yellow patterns. Far above,
the tree tops sway majestically.
Down below it is tangled
at its edge with the deep,
lush green underbrush bursting
with vitality and growth.
This was essentially the
vision of our western forests
which Emily Carr loved and
whose essence she caught
on her canvases and on paper.

The
first years of the Depression
were very productive ones.
Though the reception of
her work in Vancouver remained
so cool that she stopped
exhibiting there, Victoria
and Seattle were much more
welcoming. But Emilyís problems
were never absent for long.
By 1934, her relationships
with both the National Gallery
and the Group of Seven were
deteriorating. When she
wrote asking for the return
of some watercolours, the
Galleryís assistant director,
Harry McCurry, demonstrated
the procrastination and
insolence of office for
which officials in every
capital are known. She was
understandably indignant
that for many years the
National Gallery owned only
three of her paintings,
created in 1912.

For
two full years after 1933,
she refused to send a single
piece to exhibitions in
Central Canada. In fairness
to the Gallery, it did direct
her pieces to many exhibitions
and the Depression severely
reduced its budget.

Predictably,
Emily soon turned her cold
shoulder to the Group of
Seven one by one. She wrote
in her journal that for
years she had been at the
mercy of the East; "Now
they are far away and I
stand alone on my perfectly
good feet," and from now
on she would "push with
my own power, look with
my own eyes." The years
1934-37 were ones of fruition
for Emily. Her two surviving
sisters, Lizzie and Alice,
who for years had remained
indifferent to her art,
began to show a genuine
interest. She gave many
showings in her studio,
where, if she wished a visitor
to stay, she would lower
a chair from the ceiling
using a rope and pulley.

In
the summer of 1933, Emily
travelled to Lillooet and
Pemberton. Her art was reaching
its best. She left her Hill
Home apartment for a cottage,
where at first she felt
very lonely. In 1936 she
wrote, "I seem to be enveloped
in a dull ache composed
of tiredness, homesickness,
and loneliness.... I donít
feel as if I belonged to
a soul or mattered on earth."

Lizzie
died and Emily herself had
a heart attack in early
1937. News of her illness
and critical financial position
prompted Eric Brown to arrange
to purchase eight of the
paintings. Harris and a
number of art galleries
and individuals also rallied,
and provided in all almost
$3,000. She could now pay
her hospital bills; suddenly
she had supporters everywhere.

Emily
had become virtually an
invalid. Angina and cardiac
asthma where now added to
all her other health problems:
stiff knees, rheumatic hip,
partial deafness, weight
problems and others. She
exhibited frequently in
1937, including a solo exhibit
at the Toronto Art Gallery,
and her work was compared
favourably with even that
of Vincent van Gogh. In
the fall of 1938, several
of her paintings were featured
by the National Gallery
at a showing in London called
"A Century of Canadian Art."

Eric
Newtonís review of the exhibition
for Canadians included the
following passage: "If the
word Ďgeniusí (a word to
be jealously guarded by
the critic and used only
on very special occasions)
can be applied to any Canadian
artist it can be applied
to her. She belongs to no
school. Her inspiration
is derived from within herself.
Living among the moist mountains
and giant pines of British
Columbia, a country climatically
different from the rest
of Canada, she has had to
invent a new set of conventions,
a personal style of her
own. Where the Eastern Canadians
have been content to stylize
the outward pageantry of
the landscape, she has symbolized
its inner meaning and in
doing so has, as it were,
humanized it."

The
next triumph was in Vancouver,
where in the fall of 1938
the Vancouver Art Gallery
exhibited twenty-nine of
her forest scenes. Eleven
of them sold. After so many
years of neglect, the Gallery
wanted Emily, now past sixty-five
and in poor health. She
continued to work too hard
and suffered a slight stroke
in the spring of 1939, but
was back in the woods at
her rented cottage by summer.

Between
1930 and 1940, she made
four sketching trips. The
quality of her work, however,
was worsening and this caused
her to become discouraged.

Of
Carrís numerous paintings,
the ones I find most moving
are Indian Church, Grey,
and Blunden Harbour.
Indian Church, painted
on one of her trips to Nootka
Island, depicts a one-room
church all but engulfed
by a primeval forest. A
fragile symbol of faith
in the form of a white building
is set against a towering
green tapestry of forest.
The contrast of green and
white implies an alien element
in the woods: manís intrusion
into natureís domain. At
the same time, Godís presence
is sensed in the vast entangled
interior of the forest.

Grey
is considered one of
the most remarkable paintings
of Carrís entire career.
It is a poetic vision of
a forest at night with the
dark tree forms and a faint
light glowing from an opening
in the central conical tree.
The mood is inviting yet
fearful, with an almighty
spirit strongly implied
in the vast forest.

Blunden
Harbour is an excellent
portrayal of the spirit
of the totem poles which
project feelings of mystical
proportions. The powerful,
inscrutable figures of the
poles against the harmony
of the sky, water and hills
face the unknown in a timeless
confrontation.

Carr
is now recognized also as
a remarkable Western Canadian
writer. Her diaries, entitled
Hundreds and Thousands
and published twenty
years after her death, made
it clear that her desire
to express herself in words
came early. She was always
attracted to writing. When
she was a student she would
make up little rhymes about
her friends and illustrate
them with pen-and-ink drawings.

In
her sketch sack, when she
was leaving for field trips,
she always carried a notebook.
She used an interesting
technique, "wording," as
a means of clarifying her
thoughts before painting.
She insisted that it was
the handling of thoughts,
rather than the handling
of paint, which overwhelmed
her. In her notebook she
explained to herself why
she wanted to paint a particular
subject: what attracted
her to it, and what meaning
in the subject she was trying
to express. She found that
this system -- an articulation
in words, as well as in
colour and form -- gave
her a double approach to
her subjects which she found
helpful.

Her
approach to painting and
to writing was similar.
In writing, she stuck to
two guiding principles;
first, to get to the point
as directly as possible,
and second, never to use
a big word where a little
one would do. She was persuaded,
correctly as it turned Out,
that while her mechanics
and spelling were poor that
if she were "ultra-honest,
ultra-true, some deep realizing
of life" would overcome
other writing deficiencies.
She spoke many times in
her diaries of the difficulties
she had to overcome in writing.
"Thereís words enough, paint
and brushes enough and thoughts
enough. The whole difficulty
seems to be getting the
thoughts clear enough, making
them stand still long enough
to be fitted with words
and paint. They are so elusive,
like wild birds singing
above your head, twittering
close beside you, chortling
in front of you, but gone
the moment you can put out
a hand. If you ever do catch
hold of a piece of thought
it breaks away leaving the
piece in your hand just
to aggravate you."

Sincerity
and honesty are closely
related characteristics
of her writing. She believed
that an artist must speak
clearly to people in terms
of her own actual experience,
enriched with the spirit
and the soul. "Be careful
that you do not write or
paint anything that is not
your own, that you donít
know in your own soul. You
will have to experiment....
But donít take what someone
else has made sure of Consequently,
Carrís literary style is
characterized by complete
independence, a great simplicity
and directness. Her written
words are the equivalent
of the brisk, sure brush
strokes and splashes of
dramatic, strong colours
which are so characteristic
of her canvases.

Writing
was both less physically
difficult than painting
and less likely to lead
to criticism because she
originally wrote with no
thought of publishing. When
her health prevented trips
to the forests, Emily turned
to writing with zest. She
wrote Klee Wyck, about
her youthful years of travels
among Indians, and then
The Book Of Small. "Small"
was the name Emily gave
herself when she was a child;
this book brought to life
her recollections of Victoria
in the late years of the
last century. Her next book,
The House of All Sorts,
presented a bitter picture
of her life as a boarding-house
manager, when she struggled
to make ends meet and tried
to cope with the petty details
of running a boarding house.

Maria
Tippett notes that most
of her writing was done
between the ages of sixty-three
and seventy-one: "[Her stories]
have in common many characteristics
-- crotchetiness, alienation,
exaggeration and sentimentality
-- that had always been
part of her personality
but had become more pronounced
in her old age."

Of
her writings Tippett says,
"One feels her intense love
for the West Coast in her
evocative descriptions of
the scent of salt air, the
sting of campfire smoke
in the eyes, the push of
growth in the tangled forest,
or the forestís overwhelming
silence. Emily makes the
reader share not only the
things she loved but her
dislikes -- the thoughtlessness
of tenants, the hypocrisy
of the English, the cruelty
of her sisters -- all of
which she was able to treat
comically. Finally, she
reveals herself in her stories:
her morality, her sentimentality,
her prejudices, her love
of nature, even her meanness
and the childlike side of
her character, all are present."

The
recognition of Carr as a
writer came even before
her full acceptance as a
painter. Klee Wyck, made
up of sketches written at
various times when she penetrated
forests and visited Indian
villages on the British
Columbia coast, was a great
success. "Klee Wyck" was
the name the Indians gave
Emily at Ucluelet. It meant
"Laughing One" and was given
to her not because, in the
words of Ira Dilworth, "she
laughed a great deal --
as she herself would say,
there is not much of a giggle
in her. But her laughter
in Ucluelet went out to
meet the Indians, taking
the place of words, forming
a bond between them. They
felt at once that the young
girl staying in the missionariesí
house understood them and
they accepted her."

Both
Macmillan and Ryerson presses
initially rejected Klee
Wyck for publication,
but Ira Dilworth, the regional
director of the CBC in Vancouver,
was so impressed by her
stories that he broadcast
some of them in 1940. He
also succeeded in persuading
Oxford University Press
to publish Klee Wyck.
The first printing,
dedicated to her Indian
friend Sophie Frank, sold
out. The Womenís Canadian
Dub of Victoria celebrated
the publication on Emilyís
seventieth birthday. Congratulatory
letters arrived at the gathering
from many people, including
the B.C. premier and Lieutenant
Governor. The B.C. Indian
Commissioner thanked her
on behalf of the Native
people. Emily herself was
above all grateful to Dilworth.
Like her, says Tippett,
he was deeply religious,
proud of being a Western
Canadian and resentful of
Central Canadian dominance
of the country. The two
of them opened up to each
other fully, mostly by letter,
and he outlined his inner
thoughts, including his
concern about head office
control of the regional
CBC. Both were ecstatic
when Klee Wyck won
the Governor Generalís Award
for non-fiction in 1942.
Dilworth remained her most
loyal friend and continued
to edit her writing.

There
were three further books.
Growing Pains, about
her youth, appeared in 1946.
Pause: A Sketch Book,
about her period in
the sanatorium, came Out
in 1933. The Heart of
a Peacock, more Indian
and bird sketches, was published
in 1953. When Dilworth,
her literary trustee, died
in 1960 only a portion of
her writings had been released,
and in 1966 a new literary
executor published a selection
of her journals as Hundreds
and Thousands. The notebooks
were as she said, "to jot
me down in, unvarnished
me, old at fifty-eight."
There she poured out her
private thoughts, doubts
and inspirations. The form
a revealing self-portrait
depicting an artist often
tired and discouraged yet
always honest and true to
her ideals, and a lonely
woman.

In
the early spring of 1942,
Emily sketched the forest
again at Mount Douglas Park
near Victoria and later
produced a number of oils.
She was rushed to the hospital
with a clot on her heart
and later moved to a nursing
home. Recovering in hospital
she wrote:

"I
must go home and go sketching
in the woods. They still
have something to say to
me." She was in fact preparing
for her end from 1942 on.
She asked a friend, Carol
Pearson, to bury a number
of personal items in Victoriaís
Beacon Hill Park that year:
they were never recovered
afterwards. She gave away
many of her art pieces as
gifts. At Lawren Harrisís
suggestion, she set aside
forty-five paintings for
Western Canadians. Dilworth
and Hams, as trustees of
the Emily Carr Trust, chose
the pieces with her assistance.
As Tippett says, "the public
was informed that Miss Emily
Carr had given the paintings
to the nation, or more specifically
to the Vancouver Art Gallery,
on permanent loan." In her
will, she also indicated
that some of her paintings
should be sold to provide
for a scholarship fund "to
enable art students residing
in British Columbia to study
art at some school or art
schools to be selected by
the trustees." Dilworth
was made her literary trustee
and Harris and Willie Newcombe
her artistic ones.

Her
affairs settled, and the
University of British Columbia
wanting to give her an honorary
degree at their May, 1945
convocation, she died on
March 2nd, 1945 of yet another
clot on her heart.

Today,
43 years after her death,
Emily Carr enjoys the recognition
and admiration that eluded
her during her lifetime.
Her artistic bequest constitutes
another chapter in the history
of our cultural heritage.
So uniquely "Western" in
spirit and determination,
she eventually succeeded
in passing to Canadians
from all parts of the country
her artistic vision of the
great West -- her West.

Above
everything else, Emily Carr
was a truly great British
Columbian and Western Canadian.
"I am a Westerner," she
wrote, "and! am going to
extract all that I can to
the best of my small ability
out of the big glorious
West." It was her single
purpose to share and express
through her art the experiences
of her life in the West
she loved. "There is something
bigger than fact: the underlying
spirit, all it stands for,
the mood, the vastness,
the wildness, the western
breath of go-to-the-devil-if-you-donít-like-it,
the eternal big spaceness
of it. Oh the West! Iím
of it and I love it."

She
was not interested, as she
said in one of her books,
in the stories brought by
the people from their trips
to the Old Country, as she
found that "These wild,
western things excited me
tremendously. I did not
long to go over to the Old
World to see history, I
wanted to see now what was
out here in our West. I
was glad Father and Mother
had come as far west as
the West went before they
stopped and settled down."

"I
want my work to be typically
Western," she said, and
consequently all her life
she tried to make "western
places speak" to people
who were to see her paintings
or read her books. With
courage and devotion, she
continued to dispel the
absurd myth that the West
was unpaintable.

"Oh,
just let them open their
eyes and look! It isnít
pretty. Itís only just magnificent,
tremendous. The oldest art
of our West, the art of
the Indians, is inspirit
very modern, full of liveness
and vitality. They went
far and got so many of the
very things that we modern
artists are striving for
today."

Ira
Dilworth captured the greatness
of this amazing woman when
he said, "I am convinced
that Emily Carr is a great
genius and that we will
do well to add her to that
small list of originals
who have been produced in
this place and have lived
and commented in one way
or another on this Canada
of ours."